Towns to connect to high-speed Internet

Bill Cummings

Published 11:02 pm, Saturday, May 24, 2014

HARTFORD -- Towns across the region are receiving more than $286,000 to connect town halls to the state's high-speed Internet service in an effort intended to save local taxpayer money and increase online services.

The grants will assist municipalities with the cost of installing infrastructure associated with connecting to the state's Nutmeg Network and extending online services.

"As technology improves, government services continue to move online as a way of improving responsiveness to our state's citizens and increasing efficiency," said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

"Expanding the availability of the Nutmeg Network to now include all types of municipal services is one way the state can help municipalities reduce their own costs while eliminating overlap."

The Nutmeg Network is a state-run fiber-optic infrastructure that delivers reliable, high-speed Internet access. The network is now offered to schools, libraries and emergency services. Currently, 14 towns are connected to the network.

"This will pay to string fiber to the town hall from the closest existing connection point and install equipment necessary to get on the network, said David Bednarz, a spokesman for Malloy.

Malloy said expanding the network to include all municipal services will help towns, cities and regional councils of governments save money while sharing services and improving efficiency.

"They can see significant cost savings by doing joint service projects with other towns on the network and shifting many processes to cloud-based services," Bednarz said.

"Some items, like GIS services and nightly backups, are so data intensive that the Internet connection some town halls currently have are too slow to allow these uploads to occur efficiently," he said.

However, the cost for homeowners to hook into the system is simply too high to make it an affordable option, Bednarz added.